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Jake Xerxes Fussell occupies a slightly different niche among his contemporary folk counterparts. Rather than reinterpreting old traditions into new sounds, Fussell is more of an archivist and explorer, one who gives listeners a window into the original experience of the tunes being played. The Durham, NC-based singer appeared on the very Durham-friendly bill on the first night of Hopscotch Music Festival at the Fletcher Opera Theater, one slot before Phil Cook took the stage (that recording here). Fussell isn’t some latecomer or dilettante to the Southern material that’s on his mind; much like Alan Lomax followed in the footsteps of his father John, Fussell grew up with Fred C. Fussell, a folklorist whose work took him, and often young Jake, across the South, bringing them into contact with many traditional musicians in the process.

Paradise of Bachelors just releases Fussell’s debut record this year, produced by William Tyler, and as you’d expect, this set paid some attention to it. But there was more than that, too, owing to Fussell’s encyclopedic knowledge of the pool from which he draws, which one album can hardly contain. So we got versions of “Man At the Mill” and “Push Boat” from the album, we we also heard some classic Pete Seeger, in the form of “The Bells of Rhymney” and Virginian folk singer Helen Cockram’s “Pinnacle Mountain Silver Mine.” Fussell didn’t need much in the way of flash to get his point across, as he sat along on the broad semicircular stage in front of Cook’s ample stage set. It felt more like a fireside sing-a-long, as given by the kind of music professor you always wished you could’ve had.

Our friend Larry Tucker recorded this set with a soundboard feed together with Peluso subcardiod microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Phil Cook is a very easy person to like. If there’s a musician — or heck, a human in general — who is more affable, good-hearted and filled with positivity, I have yet to see them. Cook has been the dutiful bassist, the cheerful sidekick, the go-to-guy for a slew of bands, including Megafaun, with his brother Brad, Hiss Golden Messenger, Akron/Family, Gayngs, and DeYarmond Edison. As Phil pointed out himself, he’s had a long career of doing what other people told him — showing up on time, hitting the right notes, being a get-along guy. The new album Southland Mission represents his first foray into the world of the frontman. The microphone is his now, and the shots are his to call. So he’s assembled an eight-piece band, complete with backup singers, bass, second guitar, and keys, and he’s the one who decides when practice is, where to go, what to do. Suffice it say, most of us would be lucky to have such a genial boss. Southland Mission wears its influences on its sleeve — much as Cook literally wore a Staples Singers shirt this night — and Cook’s devotion to the gospel, soul, R&B and blues music of an earlier era is both obvious and genuine. “Lowly Road” offers a gospel-style chorus, while the loping blues of “Sitting On A Fence” could’ve come from Chicago in the 1960s.

These sets followed a relatively similar course, though with somewhat different vibes. The first, at Hopscotch, came on the day before the release of Southland Mission, and was the first time that Cook played the material in public, together with his band The Guitarheels. Staged in the grand Fletcher Opera Theater, with a band banner at his back (along with an inappropriately large ad for festival sponsor Mini), the setting felt appropriate to the moment. Packed with a fawning hometown crowd, Cook’s material was greeted at every step with roars and encouraging shouts from people he probably sees at the same shows every night (I had to reduce between-song volume to account for it, but trust me). When the band kicked off with one of the album’s most direct and best tunes, “Ain’t It Sweet,” the easy answer had to be yes — and the applause showed it. All of Southland Mission was played, not quite in album order, and the band chose to close with a country song, Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Northeast Texas Women.” As he would in New York, Cook complimented the band profusely, calling them a collection of the finest musicians he had worked with. It being the insular Triangle scene, it’s a reasonable guess that many of the people in the crowd knew them, too. Appropriate to the location, the show’s pace was leisurely and relaxed, with long breaks between songs that felt like Phil having a chat with friends. Both “Great Tide” and “Sitting on a Fence” proved to be opportunities for the band to stretch its legs, with guitar breakdowns that took them into longer territory than the tight album versions.

In New York, Phil and the Guitarheels could still welcome a crowd of friends from previous work, though in the club-like, intimate atmosphere of Rough Trade NYC. Phil may have had to exhort this crowd to stop standing so still (clearly he hasn’t seen as many shows in New York as I have), but against the odds, he got what he asked for. It remained an intimate and chatty show, and Phil’s own speech about getting to finally “be the frontman” was a touching one. Similarly, true to the album’s roots, Cook also talked a good bit about his love for the Staples singers (even wearing the T-shirt), and that’s another influence you can feel throughout these songs. For ease of listening, most of the banter tracks aren’t on the streaming versions below, but I’d urge you to download the full sets to get a better flavor of what Cook is about. While there are only so many ways to mix up the tracks on a single album, we got two brand-new covers this time: first, the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “Take Your Burden To the Lord and Leave It There,” and then Curtis Mayfield’s “Talking About My Baby.” Throughout this show, as in North Carolina, you couldn’t have forced the broad smile off of Phil Cook’s face at gunpoint. If there’s a world where nice guys finish first, well, Phil Cook is in pole position, folks.

I recorded the NYC set with a soundboard feed from Rough Trade engineer Danielle DePalma and Schoeps MK4V microphones; the Hopscotch set was recorded by our friend Larry Tucker with Peluso wide-cardiod microphones. The sound quality of both recordings is excellent. Enjoy!

Maybe that whole “old soul” saw is lame. Does a man need to have aged many decades to have lived hard, or to have seen the world through enough other people’s eyes? Does a man need to have suffered the physical indignities of age for his voice to be mournful? Is twenty-four too young to really know evil, to make heartbreak sound believable? Ryley Walker is that age. Define it by whatever trope you must, but Ryley Walker performs with a rugged grace and gut-wrenching, soul-searching level of realness that don’t come to men his age all that often. He sat down, at the rightmost end of a semicircle on Fletcher Opera Theater’s broad stage, as the final act to play there during this Hopscotch Music Festival. By the time he got up I felt a way that I hadn’t quite since seeing Hiss Golden Messenger take that same stage with a large band two years before. I don’t put any artist in the company of HGM lightly, but there I believe Ryley sits. He’s that good, the real deal, all of the great things it’s even possible to be when you’re sitting on just one album of “this kind” of material (Ryley’s previous work fell more to the experimental/noise end of the spectrum).

That LP, All Kinds of You, just arrived on Tompkins Square this April, but that material has new company in the incredibly strong output which dominated this set. Walker led off with a new song, followed by his first single, “The West Wind”, before heading into the gorgeous “Primrose Green”. Walker has already earned comparisons to Bert Jansch and Tim Buckley, and his current sound has a classicism to it that makes that fair. Walker huddled in his chair like an older man, taking long breaks between songs to get his tuning right, maybe set his head straight for the next song. Walker sings with depth, in a way that makes each song seem like it takes its own reserve of him. Away from the mic, he’s as amiable as a person comes; faced with his songs he’s transformed. These are songs that operate at some remove from even updated versions of traditional sounds; they seem almost unconcerned with modern flourishes. Kudos belong to Walker’s band, too, which includes a killer roster of players who give these songs not only shape but a live fluidity that makes them all the more special.

But don’t take our word for it. Walker will be appearing at CMJ on Friday, October 24 at an Aquarium Drunkard-sponsored showcase at Rough Trade. Don’t miss it, as the lineup contains many veterans of this site as well as special new bands.

We owe a large dose of gratitude to North Carolina-based taper Larry Tucker for recording and contributing this outstanding capture, made with Peluso American-made cardiod microphones and a soundboard feed. The quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

The Hopscotch Music Festival is prized by critics for its diversity, and the Raleigh, NC band Chatham County Line can certainly count toward that determination. At a festival featuring everything from doom and black metal to the latest indie darlings, from John Cale to noise collagists like Merzbow, nothing is too far afield to be included, so long as the music is good. Bluegrass music wasn’t over-represented at the festival by any means, but CCL were there to give you your fix, playing a modernized version of the style that keeps its history firmly in mind. Playing in the traditional stage setup clustered around a single microphone, the band covered a wide range of their catalog, as well as previews of their recently-completed sixth album, which should drop later this year.

North Carolina-based taper Larry Tucker recorded this set with a soundboard feed and American-made Peluso CEMC6 cardiod microphones. We’d like to thank him for his generosity in sharing this excellent recording. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Everyone ought to pause once or more at a festival full of big, bombastic noisy bands to revel in the simple beauty of a solo player who is expert at his instrument. Such was the case for those lucky enough to witness Cian Nugent‘s performance at the Fletcher Opera Theater during Hopscotch Music Festival, where the Irish guitarist wowed a pin-drop quiet crowd eagerly anticipating a rare U.S. show. Like virtually every solo acoustic guitar player, Nugent earns comparisons to masters like John Fahey, but the combination of the influence of his home country and the American heartland gives Nugent’s compositions a different flavor than the work of U.S. contemporaries like Danny Paul Grody or Daniel Bachman. Those craving some electric non-solo Nugent would be wise to check out the Desert Heat (Nugent, Steve Gunn, John Truscinski and Jason Meagher) set we posted here, as well as his outstanding upcoming release on Brooklyn label No Quarter, Born With the Caul, which you can pre-order now.

This set was recorded by North Carolina taper Larry Tucker with Peluso cardiod microphones, and the sound is quite good. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

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